Medical researchers have long sought a pharmacological agent that could relieve opiate withdrawal symptoms without itself producing addiction or euphoria, and, according to recent studies, clonidine hydrochloride, a prescription drug widely used in the treatment of hypertension, appears to be one such agent. The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the effectiveness of clonidine in helping opiate addicts detoxify from heroin or methadone. A preliminary clinical trial with 70 subjects showed that clonidine could be used to successfully detoxify outpatients in a safe and acceptable manner when the dose regimen was individualized and titrated according to each patient's clinical course. Patients who received clonidine treatment following abrupt withdrawal of 5-40 mg chronic methadone showed an 80 percent detoxificaton success rate. Those using large amounts of heroin or more than 30 mg methadone prior to clonidine treatment experienced the greatest difficulty in completing detoxification. The effectiveness of clonidine as compared with the usual detoxification procedure of gradual methadone dose reductions is now being tested in a double-blind placebo-controlled study. It is hoped that this study will generate more definitive information about clonidine's potential usefulness in addiction treatment.